


Tad Ridiculous

by dicks



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: 1859, 8059, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 03:19:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dicks/pseuds/dicks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gokudera needs to get his shit together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tad Ridiculous

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by theotherdenise@livejournal

"In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass." - Bukowski

-

The apartment smells of rotten fruit and cat’s crap. So this is what the present is like after spending an amount of time in the future. I pick up the remote, switch the TV on, and Takashi Fujii’s head is bobbing on the screen, oblivious to the fact that he’s looking like a complete moron. Perhaps he does aware, like Freud said, denial is one of many defense mechanisms, because sometimes life is seemingly better when we overlook our own flaws, and one always needs to pretend. I can picture myself five years from now, rotting on the couch watching the same fucking show every day. But then again no, maybe not, because something is seriously wrong with your life when your source of everyday–element is in the form of a simpleton in a blue and pink striped suit. Three years from now I will be standing by the window overlooking the city, listening to Mozart’s 25th Symphony while tapping my feet on the floor; five years from now I will be walking next to Tenth along Vicenza street and then having coffee at one of the cafe in Corso Palladi; ten years from now, if we didn’t screw up with the timeline, I’ll be fucking with the future Yamamoto, Takeshi, or whatever I’d be calling him ten years later, on his dark-blue bed covers pretending like it’s okay to fucked up with your life because it’s already fucked up as it is.

You’d hate me, Takeshi said, you’d hate me and I don’t know what to do about it. Well, I didn’t know what to do about it either. There was no astray in his room so I flicked the ash on the floor casually but my heart was beating hard against my chest from the post-orgasmic euphoria, and truthfully, from the gravity of his words. I said the exact words to my father once, I hate you, I fucking hate you, but those words are meant differently each time, differently to everyone. I still hate my father. I really do.

I step around the kitchen and find a half-opened box of cigarettes on the counter. Light it, inhale, exhale, and repeat— the shit is stale. What the fuck did I expect? I think I’ll die of cancer before hitting mid-forties. I may as well end up in hell. Average of 1.38 million people died from lung cancer around the world and the number is increasing every year. But then people are just instinctively suicidal because we are benumbed to the pollution, chemical substances, radiological contamination, people, and it eats you from inside out because the world is cancer. We were born just for the drama— good days, bad days; choke down on too many pills and then, time’s up ladies and gentlemen, thank you for reproducing, really. The fundamental fact about life is— generally it sucks.

I let the water on the sink run because the apartment is too quiet. Tenth is back to his cocoon with his family and God, how much he needs it. Tenth needs the warmth of something comfort-familiar, and I think he worries about everything and everyone too damn much. Yamamoto is back with his father because I guess he finally figured out that this isn’t a game, not everything is, and not everyone get a second chance; a trip to the future would do that to you.

I watch the water run, thinking I should be doing something else, be somewhere else. I have nowhere to go. My life after the future is ironically eventless. The night is dead quiet. I feel divorced from my own being. You made a trip to the future, changed the aftermath, and then came back to the present with yourself changed in one way or another, because you are not the same you who was in the future— because you left behind an imprint between the voids. Time is a recollection of space, and atoms, and it is madness, when you think of it. One cannot fully understand the mechanics of time. We analyzed, and we compelled to believe that there is no such thing as turning back time— and the absurdity, and yes, of course, the complex theory of quantum physics. ‘Gravity all nonsense now’, Burgess had written in his book and I fucking adore his works because as disturbing as it was, he redefined the concept of literature like no one ever did.

Still, we believe in the existence of heaven above and hell way down below to the core, layer upon layer, like pancakes of universe and somewhere out there, I believe, there is another me who isn’t as hollow as I am now, who at this particular moment isn’t standing by the sink, watching the water run, and smoking a stale cigarette.

I doubt, therefore I think; therefore I am. (1)

Therefore this is where I belong.

-

Sunday is sunny. Sunday is bright. Sunday, I wake up with the light on my face and to someone yelling outside. I curl myself into a ball, under the mass of blankets. I used to do that when I was a kid but I soon figured out that one couldn’t simply just disappear; only everything else will fade away. Sometimes I woke up and couldn’t remember where the fuck I was, an ineradicable habit I adopted from sleeping on the streets for so many nights. Well, shit happened. Shit happened and you learn and you move on. Move on Hayato, Bianchi would say, move the fuck on.

I wonder what I would do ten years from now on Sunday morning. I enjoy waking up to the smell of coffee; it reminds me of happier days. I don’t have many of those. Would I be waking up alone? Takeshi said something, which I prefer to ignore, of course— Freud’s psychoanalysis, remember? But seriously, Hibari? Why would I want to have anything to do with that atrocious barbarian, really? Visualizing it makes something in my fucking head cease to function. Even ten years later Takeshi is still an idiot. Strange, but I find it somewhat comforting, in a stupefying, agonizing, mind-boggling way. You’d leave me, Takeshi said and then, I miss you, and he said it while fumbling with my pants. Didn’t you even realize it, idiot? You shouldn’t tell me all those things. You shouldn’t touch me that way. You shouldn’t mess with the course of events. Unless, I snort to myself, unless he wanted me to return to present with the knowledge that we both would screw up in the future and change the hereafter. The question is would I even want to?

I flip the covers and jump off the bed when the phone rang. It’s Yamamoto, okay; “What?”

“Hey, are you busy?”

“It’s Sunday, idiot.”

“Can I come over later?” a rustling sound from the other line, a thud, and then he breathes and continues, “I need help with math.”

“That is not going to happen.”

He laughs and I snort. Yamamoto makes too much noise on the phone.

“Please? I’ll bring food.”

“Whatever.” Well, okay, I can use some sushi.

-

My next door neighbor is a sixty-something-years old lady; she lives with her two cats, and occasionally her young daughter would drop by with a basket of fruits. I never knew what she did with those fruits but I have a reasonable suspicion that she contributed a lot to the foul smell in my apartment, and those cats, definitely those goddamned cats. Your friend is a very nice young man, she told me once after she met Yamamoto for the first time. I wanted to tell her then, no old hag, he isn’t my friend, and no he isn’t a young man either, he’s just an idiot, shameless at that, and stop being so fucking nosy. God, I bet she eavesdropped to every one of my phone conversations and even listened to the sound of me masturbating in the shower through the thin bathroom wall. I bet she’s lonely. Dear heart please stop beating, I don’t want to live long enough to be abandoned like that. Her daughter is pathetically screwed up in the head to think that a bunch of grapes could be a substitution for aloneness. But that’s not my fucking problem. I have enough metaphorical skeletons in my imaginary closet.

“That nice old lady next door gave me this.” First thing Yamamoto says when he enters the apartment. The bowl of plums in his hand is mocking me.

“Didn't your mother teach you not to accept food from strangers?”

“Uh no. I guess she didn’t get the chance.”

“Well mine too. But there’s a thing called ‘logical thinking’ you know?”

“But Gokudera, she’s your neighbor.”

Whatever. I’m not going to argue with him over something inane like that because I skipped breakfast and now my stomach is grumbling in protest. Food first, and then it’s time to tackle math.

-

I made Yamamoto clear up the dishes, something I would avoid doing if possible. I don’t mind doing housework, not really, but I hate it when my fingers turn prune-like. I don’t know. Bianchi said I have the hands of a pianist. I do. I take after my real mother. Long fingers, small transparent hands, you can practically see the veins clearly mapped below the surface of my skin; if I were to slit my wrist, I wouldn’t have a problem finding the ulnar artery, but hell no, I’m not suicidal and yes I still can swing good punches. I broke jaws and cracked ribs with these hands, seriously.

Yamamoto is already sitting by the table with his book opened when I come out from the bathroom. He looks up at me expectantly like I’m about to give a speech, or do something so profoundly artistic that he can’t take his eyes away. Something incomprehensibly odd is in the air and I find myself blushing against my will. This is embarrassing. Any display of emotion is embarrassing, well, except for anger. Anger is the best form of defense mechanism. I scowl and sit down next to him; my kneecap’s knocking against his. Great, so much for a personal bubble. For fuck’s sake, why did I ever agree to this at first place?

Oh yeah, I forgot. The sushi. It’s always the sushi.

Math is easy, Yamamoto is not. I might as well been talking to the wall because he hardly pays attention to anything I say; one minute he’ll space out and the next he’ll be fiddling with his pencil or anything he could get his hands on. So this is what my home-tutor felt when I was busy making paper planes instead of listening to him expounding on the Reformation in Europe. Fair enough, I concede, sure, and then slap the back of his head with my palm.

“Gokudera!”

“Pay attention, moron. I don’t have all day.”

“Okay, yeah okay,” he smiles, and then takes a gulp of his milk straight from the carton he brought along with the sushi. I hate milk. Milk reminds me of cookies, and cookies remind me of Bianchi and whenever I think of my sister, I have this sudden urge to retch or simply keel over. I close my eyes, I start feeling nauseous and I can feel sushi blocking my esophagus. I imagine star clusters and sunshine and rainbows— okay, fuck, no rainbows. But at least the nausea is slowly passing.

“Hey, look at me.” He smacks his lips loudly.

I look at him.

I do. And they say if you look at things carefully enough, you can see the things you’ve missed, like the small crack underneath, like all the missing pieces, like puzzles; because nothing is supposedly perfect or imperfect like we ironically choose to perceive. Perfection— which I am. I am perfectly imperfect, subconsciously constantly breaking and collapsing everything that surrounds me, including myself and everything I hold close in an almost dangerously anticipated but not in an intended way. I allow myself a moment of introspection.

I blink to the image of Yamamoto grinning like a fool with a milk moustache framing his lips. It is like tragedy in motion. We are cliché, Yamamoto, we are all a tad ridiculous. And I was too caught up with my own artificial universe; my body is present but my mind was still in the future that may or may no longer exist. Here’s realization number one; Yamamoto needs a haircut. His bangs are longer now and his hair has grown long enough to cover the tips of his ears. Here’s realization number two; Yamamoto is Takeshi. Here’s realization number three; Yamamoto is Takeshi and ten years from now this very idiot would be fucking me into his mattress and I would let him and— where the hell is my cigarette? Holy fuck, I think I need to lie down.

“Gokudera, do you want to lie down?”

Wait a fucking minute, “What?”

“You look as if you’re about to pass out.”

-

In the future, the seconds before he pinned me down on his bed he said he was sorry.

What are you sorry for, Yama— Takeshi?

“For the things I will do.”

Sorry? Hell, sure. Absolutely.

He was sorry when he grazed his teeth on the base of my neck, he was sorry when he scraped his blunt nails on the skin just above my waistband, he was sorry when he climbed on top of me, weighed me down and kissed me on the lips like he needed to breathe, like I needed to breathe. I am Gokudera Hayato. I am indestructible and I am so splendidly flawed. But I’m not proud of who I am. I have all the characteristics of Gokudera Hayato; my pale skin, my silver hair and dull-jade-green eyes, my nicotine-stained fingers, my vocal cords— I moaned and whimpered, and barely recognized my own voice when he worked his hand down to my inner thigh but it wasn’t me that he wanted. It was the future me. Future is endless. Future is colorless. Even the air tasted differently; you could claw at nothing and still turn out with dirt under your fingernails. The future, according to Takeshi, is everything that the present is not.

"God, I always want this, Gokudera. You see, I always like you." In the dark, Takeshi was almost a stranger. I wasn’t used to Takeshi’s humorless laugh. I wasn’t used to feeling sorry for him. I wasn’t used to looking up to him. I’m sorry Takeshi, but you’re such a bastard, nobody had touched me like that, like I was important, like they cared, like I was somebody else entirely. I’m sorry for not being able to push you away, that I was fucked up.

“I want you.” He was hard for me. No, not me. We both knew it wasn’t true. He was hard for the future me. But fuck it. Screw dignity and reasons— and kudos self, for making one bad decision after another. His grip on my shoulders was iron-tight. I’m sorry that your father’s dead.

“I never had you, Gokudera.”

-

I look down. Yamamoto is holding both of my arms. Sorry to disappoint but I’m not weak, okay, just crazy, barking mad, insane and close to losing it. “Let go of me.” I hate the way I sound. I need to get my shit together.

He lets me go. I watch him fidget and then scratch the back of his neck; something he does whenever he feels unsure, or nervous. How the hell do I know this? Sometimes he bites the inside of his mouth when he’s deep in thought. His fingers twitch when he feels restless, he frets from sitting too long, a typical case of a jock. This Yamamoto isn’t a stranger. I was fucking blind.

Screw you, fucktard. Don’t look at me like that. I wonder how I look to him. I force a scowl. My heart pounds in my ears. Am I a conflict? Why do I persist on being catastrophic? I don’t even know. I can’t sleep without checking on every doors and windows twice. I talk to my own reflection in the mirror. I pray to unknown creatures beyond the galaxy and I too, know the feeling of wanting to jump off from a building. I just feel so fucking conflicted.

“Is something wrong, Gokudera?”

Nothing is wrong, Yamamoto. Everything is wrong, in more ways than one. I have this incredible feeling, an unwanted feeling— it’s like seeing Yamamoto for the first time, it’s like waking up from a deep coma and the only thing that make sense to me, doesn’t make sense at all. The intent comes uninvited; I want Takeshi but Takeshi is Yamamoto, and the sheer thought of it is just not fucking graspable. My body tense, my body remembers, I secretly want to flee, almost petrified— of the things that matter.

This isn’t part of the plan. Was there a plan to begin with? Takeshi was above me, fucking me and I was the one who kept screaming his name, over and over as I came. I was completely, thoroughly swayed by something— akin to everything, akin to heat-pooling wants, and shakingly stupendous, mentally jolting frenzy— and God, this is not supposed to be shocking. But shit, it is.

Now he’s looking at me straight in the eyes, expression all too familiar. He has a flash of contemplation but he doesn’t ask. Hand on my shoulder, I flinch. Do not run. Particles of time fabricate into one soft moment. I am weary and spent from clarity, boneless from the proximity. He is all Yamamoto Takeshi.

“Hey, Yamamoto.”

So, this is what the present is like after spending an amount of time in the future. Welcome back Hayato.

-

(1) Dubito ergo cogito; cogito ergo sum - Rene Descartes


End file.
